


What Makes You Different

by SQ (proteinscollide)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:44:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proteinscollide/pseuds/SQ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall’s wings are a secret hidden in plain sight, a curse and a blessing at the same time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Makes You Different

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Ro (littlerhymes) for listening to me talk for months about a fandom she's not in, and then agreeing to beta for me anyway. :D All remaining mistakes are most definitely mine.

His wings had come in without warning the day he turned 16. 

He’d gone to bed half-hard, drifting off thinking about Angie Turner’s tits, Dave Lockhart’s arse, his party planned for Friday night. When he’d woken up the next morning, his face smushed into his pillow, his back was sore in two places, like the skin had split open then healed abruptly during the night along his shoulder blades. 

Still bleary-eyed, only half-awake, he’d stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom. He caught a glimpse of them in the mirror as he stood at the head taking a piss, a shimmery, iridescent reflection out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t until minutes later, hand on the flush, he realised what they were, what he was seeing. He’d stood frozen, pants undone, gawping at the wall, when his father walked in and said, “Oh, _fuck_ ” in such a resigned tone that Niall knew instantly that he wasn’t dreaming; and that his dad had known, feared, this might happen one day.

***

“Jesus Christ it’s hot here,” Niall groans as Paul ushers him from the hotel to the waiting van. He winces as the sunlight assaults his eyes, throwing up a hand to shield out the worst of the glare. “This fucking weather, how do people get used to it?”

“Cheer up, grumpyhead,” Harry says, laughing as he climbs into the mercifully air-conditioned van. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, did we?”

Harry’s curls are already plastered to the side of his head in the humidity, but the bastard’s still wearing a beanie and looking much too cheerful and cool. Niall wants to murder him. Ten o’clock in the morning and his singlet is already tacky against his skin, his hair damp under the cap. Worst of all, Niall can feel the drag of his wings acutely; laden with moisture, they droop and pull painfully at his shoulders. Harry slides onto the seat beside him and tries to sling his arm around Niall’s shoulders in one smooth move. Niall flinches and pulls away. 

“Don’t, I - we’re gross,” he says, pulling a face.

“Marinating in our own juices,” Harry says with a grin, unfazed by Niall shuffling further down the seat. “About to be grilled in a sweltering oven of a room by a pack of wild American DJs out for our blood.” 

“Shut it,” Niall says. He hunches his shoulders and slumps low in his seat, trying to ease the discomfort of his wings crushed under him, knowing he can never explain to any of the others why the heat’s so much worse for him. He can hear the squelch of feathers as he shifts, drowned by chatter as the rest of the guys pile into the van. He wants nothing more but to be able to shake his wings out so they don’t feel quite so heavy on his back, but there’s been no time to do it this morning, with Liam ducking in and out of his room to check he was up and ready for the day ahead, and Zayn slinking in to eat breakfast on his bed, eyes hooded with sleep. And there certainly isn’t anywhere to do it now. Maybe he could duck off to the loo before the interviews. Niall grimaces, and stares out the window, trying to distract himself with the view as the streets of Atlanta roll by. 

He doesn’t notice until too late, Harry sliding an arm around his waist, fingers tucking into the curve, head pillowed on Niall’s shoulder with his face turned away. With every breath he fans hot air down the gap at the back of Niall’s top, ghosting over the tips of wings he can’t see are there. Niall squirms against the leather of the seats, feels himself get hard at the contact; he takes off his cap and throws it casually on his lap. Harry, unaware, starts singing softly under his breath, an exquisite torture. 

Niall closes his eyes and thinks of icy, cool water for myriad reasons.

***

Looking back, Niall realised there might have been some warning of what he was in for.

Every year at Christmas, he’d sung for his dad’s family. The year he was ten, his great aunt Siobhan had wandered up after carols and peered at him over her thick, greasy glasses. Everyone said she was a bit batty, permanently lost in some inner world of her own making, so Niall had said nothing when she started patting him lightly on the back with both hands. He’d seen it as some reassuring, old lady sort of gesture, harmless if a little embarrassing. 

“Why, you’re still a baby,” she’d said finally, a hint of disappointment in her voice. “Not yet grown into your gift. But a voice like an angel’s already, eh?” Her eyes behind the glass were sharp, bright, on him for a moment and then her gaze softened and she was staring off into the distance behind him again. 

Niall was used to the compliment, had heard it from a parade of his nanna’s friends, but this time his mam came up behind them suddenly and jerked Niall sharply out of Siobhan’s grasp, her mouth turned down. 

It was the last time he saw Siobhan - she died in her sleep a few months later – and he didn’t really miss her until the Christmas after he turned 16, and wondered how much she known, what she could’ve told him about the other worldliness he now carried with him.

***

“I thought the heat was supposed to sap your appetite,” Liam says, watching Niall scarf down lunch with disbelief.

“I’m starving, and it’s actually distracting me from how damn uncomfortable I am,” Niall says thickly, his mouth half full of sandwich. 

“Where do you put it all?” one of the make-up ladies says, marvelling. “You’ve not a bit of fat on your bones.”

Niall shrugs. He can’t very well tell them it’s the wings – he’d never felt as hungry in his life as when they first grew in. His dad had thrown his hands up in disgust when their shopping bill tripled overnight. 

As if they know Niall is thinking about them, his wings twitch under his singlet, a sudden tightness across his shoulders as they threaten to stretch out and break free from their confinement. It’s been a long, tedious morning, and the rough brushing out he’d given them in the small, cramped bathroom stall before the interviews hasn’t helped any. 

Niall ducks his head and risks a quick shake, rolling his shoulders back, trying to loosen the tension. When he looks up, Harry’s beside him, a frown creasing his face.

“You alright, mate?” Harry asks, placing a hand at the crook of Niall’s neck. He rubs the skin there gently, then digs his fingers in. “You’ve been tense all day,” he says, kneading the muscles, an insistent press. 

“Worried that fit DJ won’t call?” Lou calls from across the room, smirking. “Yeah, we heard all about her from Paul and how you were flirting up a storm.”

“You’re just jealous of my natural charm,” Niall says, waggling his eyebrows. His back relaxes under Harry’s fingers, the soothing distraction of his hands. He tries not to melt into it too much, tries to hide the shivers of pleasure rippling across his wings. 

“Better?” Harry asks softly, bending down by Niall’s ear, and Niall comes to with a start. Harry is resting his palms just below his neck, his thumbs dipping just below the collar of Niall’s singlet. Niall struggles for a moment between the pleasure of the touch and the fear of discovery; any lower, and Harry would be brushing against the top of his wings. 

“A little,” Niall admits, but he shifts forward and eases out from under Harry’s touch, ignoring the way his skin prickles at the loss of contact.

***

The first time he tried to fly with them was a month after. It wasn’t like it was easy to find a time, a place, where a boy floating in mid-air wouldn’t be noticed. He’d finally waited for a full moon, bright enough to see by, but dark enough in the shadows to hide.

All his planning was for naught, in the end. His wings didn’t look like those of the angels in the stained glass windows down at the church – big, white, imposing. His seemed barely there sometimes, translucent, with a span barely stretching from one elbow to the other at full stretch. 

So when he’d launched himself from a branch from the tallest tree he could climb, his body had hit the ground not long after, with just a bit of hang from the frantic flapping of his wings. Niall wasn’t sure what they were for, if not for flying. He’d been lucky to escape with scrapes and bruises in a few places, and a hurt pride.

His dad had taken one look at him when he came home in the middle of the night and shook his head.

“You should see the other guy,” Niall had joked, wincing as his teeth caught a split in his lip.

“They can get stronger, larger, as you grow,” his dad said instead. 

“How would you know?” he asked, bitterness creeping into his voice. The wings came from his dad’s side of the family – his mum had been very clear about that – but his dad doesn’t have them, and Greg can’t even see them. 

“Your uncle Joe said so,” his dad answered, matter-of-factly. 

So Niall had tried to fly a few more times, and almost dislocated his shoulder one time, but he’d never managed to rise more than a stool’s height above the ground for any period of time. 

And then X Factor happened, and Niall barely had time to unfurl his wings anymore, let alone train them to do anything other than to fold up real small and stay hidden under his shirt.

***

“Pool after the show?” Liam asks as they wait through the countdown. “Paul’s okayed it with the hotel.”

“Hell yes,” Niall says eagerly. The sun set a few hours ago but the heat is unrelenting. Standing in the cool dark side of stage, he tries not to think about the strong lights about to be trained on them, the hour or so of show to come. His shoulders tense up at the thought anyway and his wings tug and pull at him again. Niall grimaces but as he hears the roar of the crowd, _three, two, one!_ , he breathes out and whoops as he runs onto the stage, doing his best to dull the ache.

The pool sounds like bliss at the end of the day, their reward for keeping it together. Even Zayn rolls up his jeans and sits on the edge for a little while, cooling his legs in the water, before retreating to a deck chair to text his friends. Louis and Harry dive bomb to see who can make the biggest splash, and try to drown each other at both ends of the pool. Liam persists with laps until Louis lands on him during one spectacular dive and then it’s an all-out war. 

Niall joins in for a bit but he’s really waiting for them to clear out, one by one. Even though they can’t see them, it’s not until he has the pool to himself that he dares to lie back and let his wings flutter open under the water. He floats like that for a bit, staring up at the stars, and lets the heat, the damp, the discomfort seep away in the slow unfurling of his wings, the flicker in the water beneath him as they brush lazily back and forth. Niall closes his eyes and feels free, finally.

“Niall?” Harry’s voice is quiet, but it carries across the silence. 

Startled, Niall’s wings snap shut behind him and churn up choppy waves as he tips forward, feet floundering for the bottom. He ducks under the surface for a second, willing his heartbeat to slow down, for this all to be a dream, a nightmare he can wake up from. But when he comes up for breath, his face is still hot, his heart is still racing, and Harry is still there, kneeling by the pool’s edge, watching him with wide eyes. 

“Just checking to see if you’d drowned,” Harry says, with a quick grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Um, the rest are heading out for a bit, but I was thinking of putting on a movie. You?”

“A night in with air-conditioning and a full minibar sounds good, ta,” Niall says, trying to sound normal. His hand scrambles on the edge of the pool for purchase and Harry reaches down to pull him out instead. Niall tumbles forward, awkwardly hopping to a standstill, and he ends up nose-to-nose with Harry for a long moment. 

“I’ll come by your room, yeah?” Harry says, in a low voice.

“Yeah, give me time to shower,” Niall says. He can hear his heart pounding loud in his ears, and he lets go of Harry’s hand a beat too late. 

It’s a quick, cold shower but when he comes out of the bathroom, still towelling his hair, there’s a lingering heat in the room. Niall groans and falls forward onto the soft bed. Sweat pools at the base of his back and he’s glad he left his shirt off; but soon the air-con starts to work its magic and he enjoys the cool air ruffling up his feathers, now lighter for not being matted against his back. He drifts off in the dark and forgets his plans for the night, until he hears the click of the door as Harry lets himself in.

“Grab me a drink, will ya?” he asks, lazy and comfortable, voice muffled in the covers. 

There’s clinking in the background and then a cool bottle rolling along the side of his neck, leaving a trail of condensation. Niall jumps at the shock and his wings flutter before he can think to still the movement. There’s a silence as Niall shifts so he can open the bottle and take a drink.

Harry says, hesitantly, “You – there’s something there, right? I’m not imagining things?” 

Niall thinks about denying it – it’s clear Harry can’t see the wings, only the way the air is moving above his back as if pushing against something that shouldn’t be there – but then he shrugs and says, “Yeah.” 

He shimmies his shoulders a little and watches Harry’s eyes tracking the movement, the shiver by his back, something just a touch askew.

“Can I – “ Harry reaches out a hand, and Niall bites his lip and tenses up, his usual reaction to the worry of being exposed. But he nods, then folds his arms in front of him so he can bury his head and not have to see as Harry discovers for himself that Niall’s not quite normal, not the same as everyone else.

He can feel when Harry realises – when his fingers don’t quite meet skin as expected, but find unseen bumps instead, where the shafts of the feathers disappear under his skin, when his fingers smooth along the vanes of the feathers. 

“Is this okay?” Harry whispers. He runs his fingers along the rachis of one feather, then another, and another again. Niall can’t help but turn his head toward him, sighing at the pleasure, the feeling intense and building low in his gut. 

“Yes,” Niall breathes out, voice cracking; then Harry pulls away and he catches himself making an unhappy noise, burying his head in his arms again out of embarrassment. 

He has just enough time to think about what he’ll say to Harry tomorrow – if he’ll saying anything at all – when there’s a touch on his back again, both of Harry’s hands running down the length of his spine. Niall lifts his head and peers over one shoulder. Harry’s shucked his shirt, his jeans; he’s teasing out Niall’s wings in his briefs only, as if this is something they do every day. 

“Can you stretch them out? I think I can see them now, maybe.”

Niall bites back his retort that it won’t make a difference, that if Harry or any of the others had the Sight they would’ve noticed them a hell of a lot earlier, and unfurls them anyway. He feels one tip brush up against the side of Harry’s face, hears the breathy _oh_ that Harry makes at the touch. 

“I wish,” Harry says then, low and desperate, “I want - ” 

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but one hand reaches out blindly until he finds the outline of a wing and runs his fingers along its soft edge. The tip of Harry’s tongue slips past his lips in concentration and Niall groans and sweeps his wings around the both of them to draw Harry close, closer, until their foreheads are touching. 

“I want you to, too” he says, quietly. Harry’s mouth stretches into a pleased smile and Niall can’t help then but fit his mouth to Harry’s in a kiss. 

It’s careful and sweet at first, Harry’s hands hesitant as they ghost over the surface of his wings as they make out. But when Niall nips at Harry’s lower lip with his teeth, Harry makes a frustrated noise and pulls Niall against him, until Niall’s pressed into the mattress, Harry plastered along his back rutting against him. He keeps one hand sweeping along Niall’s side to hold him close, the other dancing across an outstretched wing. The light caresses are driving Niall crazy and he works his hips against the bed with a whine, pushing back against Harry with every movement, until Harry gets the hint and drops his hand to wrap around Niall’s cock.

It’s sort of an awkward fit, Harry’s hand around him and Harry’s cock against his arse, and the wings in between with Harry still moving blindly through the feathers, but Niall couldn’t stop for anything now because it feels so good, it just feels right. Harry comes with his face buried in the crook of Niall’s neck, a muffled shout, his fist tightening around a handful of feathers in a sharp tug. It stings for a moment, but the shock pushes Niall over the edge and he swallows a small cry as he comes as well. 

As Harry loosens his grip, he takes a few deep breaths then starts mouthing at Niall’s skin just under his jaw, gentle kisses. But it’s not until his brain starts clearing from the pleasant daze of orgasm that Niall slowly realises Harry’s murmuring between kisses. When he finally tunes into the words, he can hear Harry is saying _sorry, sorry_. 

“Hey, what’re you sorry for?” Niall says, turning to face Harry, suddenly worried. 

Harry snatches his hand back as if he’s done something wrong. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says, eyes wide. “I shouldn’t have been so rough.” 

“What, this?”Niall says, bringing his wings forward so he can inspect them up close. There’s a small droop on his left, a few crushed feathers near the tip, but Niall hadn’t felt any pain. 

“No harm, no foul,” Niall reassures Harry. “They’re – I’m tougher than that.” He shakes his wings out and the damaged feathers fall to the bed. Harry’s eyes widen when he sees them appear on the bed and he reaches out and picks one up. It’s small, barely the length of his palm and he balances it on the end of his fingers and brings it close to his face. 

“They’re beautiful,” he says, wonder in his voice. “Are they – your wings are like this?” 

“Yeah, pretty much,” Niall says. 

“That’s fantastic,” Harry says. He reaches out until he can feel them under his hands again, smoothing them down. “God, they’re gorgeous, they feel so good.” 

Niall blushes and rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “They’re alright, I guess. Bit uncomfortable sometimes, actually.” He thinks about the grief they’ve given him all day, but it’s hard to hold that feeling now with Harry beside him, naked and beautiful, and see himself reflected in the wonder in Harry’s eyes. “You don’t think it’s a bit weird?” 

“No,” Harry says firmly, drawing him in closer for another kiss. “This is - you’re amazing. They’re incredible.”

***

The thing is, vain as it may sound, Niall’s had that thought too - just the once before.

He’d never have tried out for X Factor otherwise. He’d felt a little foolish, filling out the application – he was just a kid from Mullingar with stars in his eyes, after all. But the thought he could never put out of his mind was this: if he could have wings, then the extraordinary was already real; anything could happen, and dreams could come true. 

END


End file.
